Did you
know that, sweet pea is one of the top three
favourite flowers in the UK?

Sweet Pea (Lathyrus
odoratus) "Cupani"

Sweet Pea (Lathyrus
odoratus)

The Sweet Pea (Lathyrus odoratus) is the flower of the month for
April. The sweet pea is
popularly known as the "Queen of Annuals". The name "sweet
pea" is believed to have first been used by the poet Keats
(1795-1821). The Latin name for the sweet pea is Lathyrus odoratus. This
was the name chosen by the great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus to replace
the former, less memorable, but highly descriptive Lathyrus
distoplatyphyllus, hirsutus, mollis, magno et peramaeno flore, odoro
given to it in 1701 by Caspar Commelin. The genus Lathyrus contains
about 150 species.

Wild sweet peas
have been traced back to Sicily, China, Malta, Sri Lanka and elsewhere,
but the true origins of the species are lost to history. The first
printed reference, though, is attributed to
sicilian monk Francisco
Cupani who was in charge of a botanical garden n Sicily. Cupani
published a written description of the plant in 1699 and sent seed to
other European botanists and its cultivation was begun. Sweet peas would
eventually become the most widely grown of garden flowers worldwide.

From these “original”
plants were developed what were known as the grandiflora but are now
generally called the Old-Fashioned Sweet Peas

1999 is the tercentenary of the introduction of the
sweet pea to England. The original introduction had rather small flowers,
but was very strongly scented. Much early work in genetics was done at
Cambridge University, using sweet peas as the subject. Sweet peas come
in a very wide range of colours, but not yellow. Early expectations of
being able to breed a yellow sweet pea by conventional means were
already fading rapidly by 1915.

Sweet pea flowers naturally self pollinate while still
in bud. Sweet peas are not edible, being somewhat poisonous if eaten in
quantity. Sweet peas are widely grown in Japan, Australia, New Zealand
and the USA. By 1913 about 1700 acres of sweet peas were being grown in
California to meet the annual demand for some 450 tons of seed, about
half of which went to Europe, mostly to England. Market
research consistently finds sweet peas to be one of the top three
favourite flowers in the UK.